1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to certain new and useful improvements in rapidly displayed text for rapid reading, and more particularly, to a method of enhancing the readability of rapidly displayed text, and with an improved reading apprehension, one word at a time by using selected rates of display of the words of a text and selected modes of presentation.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Initially, and with the advent of personal computers, it was assumed that the computer would eliminate much of the paper used for conveyance of information and retention of information. In many ways, the reverse is true, in that the computer is responsible for generation of a greater volume of paper records. Nevertheless, one of the problems with computers in general is that the displays are too difficult for reading at a comfortable distance for any reasonable period of time. Naturally, if the screen is small, the letters are too small to read at a normal reading distance. If the screen is large, greater eye movement is required, thereby resulting in eye fatigue. In addition, the reader must manually press various keys, such as a "page-down" key or select other commands by actuating keys on the keyboard or using the mouse, to bring the next text into view. This necessarily requires periodic interruption of reading at arbitrary points within the text being read.
Research performed at the John Hopkins University has shown that reading rates can be increased by reducing eye movement. Those institutions offering speed-reading instruction have attempted to make use of reduced horizontal eye movement by causing students to read down the middle of a page. However, this still requires vertical eye movement, along with reading interruption when turning to the next page.
There are numerous diskettes and CD-Rom's containing the text of many books and other publicly available documents. Often times, they are accompanied by a text "reader", which displays the text of the book one screen at a time. Thus, the user must move their eyes across the entire screen to read the text, and manually advance to the next screen when reaching the bottom of a page. Some readers will allow for scrolling of the text continuously, and allowing the reader to adjust the rate at which the lines are scrolled. However, these readers do not take into account the differing amount of text per line. Moreover, the constant vertical scrolling is distracting, and the reader must still read an entire line across the screen horizontally, thereby again leading to eye fatigue.
The advances made in the enhancement of the readability of text have, in large measure, been a result of the availability of low cost personal computers. Many of the commercially available computers are capable of performing a variety of functions, such as printing with different types of fonts, and even allowing for the change of colors of the print on the screen of a monitor. In addition, many of the commercially available computers also allow for the change of the font size, either on the screen of the monitor or when printed. Further, these commercially available computers also provide for the drop-down of text, to show portions of the text in another window on the screen of the monitor. In substance, these commercially available computers can perform a variety of functions, both in the display of text and in the printing of text.
As a result of the recent expansive use of personal computers, there has been at least one attempt to provide a method of providing for the enhanced readability of text material. This attempt also relied upon rapid reading with words of text rapidly displayed in a window of the screen on a computer monitor. Although this attempt did provide for the rapid and sequential movement of words of text through a window on a screen of a computer monitor, it nevertheless suffered from several disadvantages.
In the one proposed rapid reading method thus far available, words were displayed sequentially, but at a fixed rate of speed. Each word was allowed the same presentation time on the monitor. Thus, for example, the article "a" was allowed the same amount of time as a word which may contain ten or more characters. The same held true of punctuation marks, which were recognized as words. This type of arrangement did not allow for a normal reading rate in accordance with a standard reading pattern of the average reading individual.
Other than this one attempt to enhance the readability rate of text as described above, there has not been any effective use of computers for this purpose. There are numerous proposed academic rapid reading courses. These academic courses rely upon techniques to improve the reading, as, for example, by scanning text and the like. They do not permit reading at a rate which is greater than the unaided reading capability of any individual. This one known attempt, which is at least partially effective for this purpose, does not recognize the necessity of permitting reading in accordance with the normal reading patterns of an individual, and hence, it loses a substantial amount of sufficiency, and frequently causes the user to become disenchanted with the system.
In addition, this one known method of providing for the reading of rapidly displayed text, relied upon a relatively flat standard computer screen background. As a result, and due to the fact that the text was being rapidly displayed, significant eye strain and eye fatigue resulted. Moreover, this system enabled the reader to adjust the display background at will, and which has now been found to be detrimental to enhancement of reading rate and reduction of eye fatigue.
There has been a need for a method for enhancing the readability of rapidly displayed text by a subject, and with an improved reading apprehension, and which is greater than the maximum unaided reading capability of a subject.